Poetry for the Masses - Our Celebration of National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month and we here at TNBBC wanted to take a moment to add our praise and appreciation towards poets and poetry. Whether you are into the classics or prefer more modern and contemporary forms, you're bound to find a few new poets to fall in love with after checking out who we've been reading and admiring!




 What Drew's Into: 

So I was never much of a poetry guy. Love me some Shakespeare, of course - but beyond that, it was pretty much Billy Collins and Seamus Heaney.  In fact, Heaney was my stated favorite poet until early this year when I read Saeed Jones' absolutely tremendous Prelude to Bruise. Not only is it the best collection I've ever read, it's the best thing I've read so far in 2015. 

There's a physicality to the poetry and a confessional sense that transcends the words on the page. I felt changed after I read every single poem in the collection, somehow made new. Plus, I was lucky enough to see him read a few poems at an event and his gift with flow and rhythm and meter is even more apparent than it was on the page. 

I've also been reading Amber Tamblyn's brand-new DarkSparkler, which is great so far. And although I'm honestly not sure if I like all of his work, Michael Robbin's poems are like the South Park of poetry. You shake your head at the silly dumbness and then stumble on brilliant social commentary. Still, he could be a bit less prolific and make that commentary hit harder.  But a line like "Is this Mick Jagger that I see before me? / Come, let me clutch thee" in his The Second Sex made me a fan for life.




What Melanie's Into:

Nick Demske's self-titled collection (Fence Books, 2010) was one of the first collections of poetry I remember reading and being excited by how the poet used the genre to play with language in a visual way. The line breaks often suggest the line ends with one word, only for the ending of the word to be on the next line. Demske's use of this strategy made each poem something I had to read and read again, filling me with surprise. I remember being intrigued and wanting to read different parts to someone nearby.

My favorite poet ever is Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906). This was a man who captured the essence of the black experience in the U.S. The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar is free to download, and it is in this collection that you can experience some of the best poems with the most soul around: "An Antebellum Sermon," "A Negro Love Song," "We Wear the Mask," and "The Colored Soldiers." The poems are written in dialect, so they take some getting used to, but you can listen to some performancesof the poems by Herbert Woodward Martin.

Alphabet, by Inger Christensen (New Directions 2001) was translated by Susanna Nied and originally published in 1981. This collection is structured using a mathematical formula. For those who feel that poems can be challenging, understanding the formula helps you predict how the poem is shaped and why. I had a good time teaching this collection in a class and then having students use the math formula to create their own series of poems.

Sometimes it's hard to decide which collection I should recommend from Langston Hughes (1902-1967), so I'll just suggest The Collected Poems, a 736 page tome (Vintage Books 1994) that gets it all in there. Hughes writes some of the most important and beautiful works in American history. If you don't want to invest in a whole book, at least read these poems: "I, Too," "The Weary Blues," and "Dream Deferred" (The play A Raisin in the Sun got it's name from this poem).

What Kate's Into:

Ten Years in an Open Necked Shirt by John Cooper Clarke

 Punk poet John Cooper Clarke is still writing and performing. In this reissued 1983 collection, you can sense the atmosphere of his gigs in the relentless rhythm, audacious rhyme and blunt language he uses to chronicle Eighties Britain. There is dark comedy, a strong sense of the ridiculous and moments of poignancy. And anger. Always anger.

Selected Poems by Federico García Lorca, translated by Merryn Williams

 This is a bilingual collection of poems by the Spanish poet and playwright who was killed in 1936 in Spain’s Civil War. I particularly like the spare, haunting imagery of the early poems. If, like me, you have some but not fluent Spanish, you can enjoy the rhythm and music of the originals then tease out the subtleties of mood and meaning in Williams’ translations, which are fine poems in their own right.

Selected Poemsby Stevie Smith

 The poet and novelist probably best known for “Not Waving but Drowning”, Stevie Smith’s poems become odder the more you look at them. Apparently simple, even childish, with their engaging rhymes, they are full of melancholy, sly humour and something elusive. Which is just what you want from poetry.

What Lindsey's Into:

Favorite Living Poet

It’s almost impossible to pick one favorite living poet. I love several different poets for extremely different reasons, but I think for this I’m going to pick Billy Collins. I could have said Barbara Ungar since I love her new book, or Jill Alexander Essbaum, orJennifer L. Knox, or Matthew Zapruder or… the list goes on basically. But Billy Collins was the first poet where I thought “Hey, this poetry thing doesn’t have to be all serious and dark and overly deep.” Once I saw that, I would introduce Billy Collins to the high school students I used to teach, and I have the pleasure of watching a new love of poetry dawn on them the way it hit me. He may be a big mainstream poet now, but my experiences with him are very personal and very real.

Dead Poet

Easy. Sylvia Plath. My love started out like a lot of female poets, with a sick fascination in her life and a passing interest in her poems. After three or four rereads though I fell in love with her careful words and her unique images. By grad school I fell deep into Plath’s world, reading her Unabridged Journals, her Letters, her fiction, even her children’s stories. My thesis argued that The Colossus is a technically stronger collection than Ariel. She’s more than the jilted woman writing emotional poems, she is an ingenious, determined and skilled artist.

What Lori's Into:

I'm writing a post about my two all time favorite poets (Rod McKuen and Ryan W Bradley) for Alternating Current's blog The Spark, and rather than get redundant and talk about them here, too, I thought I'd share the quirkest, coolest collections I've read in the past few years instead:

Panic Attack, USA - Nate Slawson

Holy hell, this is some wild poetry. This is everything that poetry should be and never was until now. Honest and naked. Sensitive to the point of sappy but with a surprisingly hard core edge. Nate Slawson's words punch you in the gut with their beauty. They make you wish your boyfriend/husband/partner pined for you in such painfully raw and inspiring ways. This book touched me in places I shouldn't have enjoyed but did. I love it's naughty, raunchy little heart. If Panic Attack, USA were a person, I would kidnap it and hold it hostage in my closet and make it whisper its dirty little poems to me every night. It's slam. It's ragged. It's dirty and delicious.

But Our Princess is in Another Castle - BJ Best

Who doesn't love old school video games, right? If you're a GenXer like me, you can't pass up this collection of poetry inspired by the best of the retro-80's Atari and Nintendo games. Finding inspiration in the likes of Dig Dug,Pole Position, The Oregon Trail, and Space Invaders, BJ Best infuses his words with nostalgia and longing. Each poem recalls to us the wonder or aggravation of the game for which it was named, forcing us to recall those simpler times and sweeter victories. How very alike our feelings for these games mirror our interpretation of the world beyond the cartridge and console. Even the collection's title, cleverly stolen from the Super Mario Bros game in which each castle defeat left the gamer frustrated because the prize - the princess - was yet at ANOTHER castle... even the title causes that familiar ache of love, expectation, and disappointment to wash over us. Imagine what the words contained within will do.

Injecting Dreams into Cows - Jessy Randell

Jessy Randall is a girl after my own heart. Her poetry is about robots, muppets, monsters, dreams, video games, and motherhood. It's perfection parading around as paranoia. It makes you giggle, snort, hiccup, and gasp. I stumbled across her collection just a few weeks ago while flipping through my twitter feed. Her Muppets Suite poem was linked through The Nervous Breakdown and I thought it was absolutely brilliant. The good news is... as awesome as this is.. there are poems within this collection that are even better. I know, how could that be possible, right? Her approach to poetry is so refreshing. I'm betting she'd be a cool chick to hang out with. Go on and get this one. You're going to find so much to love here.

Page 69: Fram

The Page 69 Test is not mine. It has been around since 2007, asking authors to compare page 69 against the meat of the actual story it is a part of. I loved the whole idea of it and so I'm stealing it specifically to showcase small press titles - novels, novellas, short story collections, the works! So until the founder of The Page 69 Test calls a cease and desist, let's do this thing....

In this installment of Page 69, 

we put Steve Himmer's Fram to the test...

OK, Steve, set up page 69 for us.

At this point in the novel, our protagonist Oscar has returned home from work and is alone in his apartment after his wife texts to say she’ll be out for the evening.

What is Fram about?

Primarily, it’s about Oscar who works in an obscure, minor agency of the US government — the Bureau of Ice Prognostication —  where he’s responsible for creating fake records of what was discovered on Arctic expeditions to avoid the expense of anyone actually going. Early in the novel he gets sent on an errand to the actual Arctic, fulfilling (in a fashion) his boyhood dream of being an explorer, and the further north he travels the more he is pulled into a mysterious and dangerous struggle between competing agencies and interests. But it’s also a story about marriage, and the distance that grows over time even between people who are close, and about the distance between the Arctic and the southern cultures trying to force it to mean one thing or another.

Do you think this page gives our readers an accurate sense of what Fram is about? Does it align itself the book’s theme?

It certainly reflects the marriage part of the story, and shows Oscar’s alienating obsession with all things Arctic, and his inability to see the world through any other lens. It’s a quiet moment in what is, overall, a pretty active and fast-moving novel—on purpose, because I set out deliberately to write a novel of overwhelming momentum after my first novel was so intentionally quiet and still.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Page 69

FRAM

They’d go months sometimes without sex or anything like it, months without touching each other in bed, her body closed off to him however warm she’d been over dinner, over drinks on the porch, even on the couch a few minutes before. Some nights the result was an argument after dark, more or less the same one every time.

Him saying she’d changed and her saying of course she had, they were older, their lives busier, insisting the question to ask wasn’t why she had changed but why he had not.

And Oscar insisting sex wasn’t the point but the effort was, her being willing to rise above being tired, to muster some last reserve at the end of the day for his sake. To show him he mattered that much. Once he made the mistake of insisting that Peary’s last push at the Pole, when his team finally reached it, wasn’t only about wanting to but about honor and debt and what partners owe to each other, and she’d stormed from the room to sleep on the couch, mutters of “P goddamn F,” trailing behind her and Oscar left alone in the bed, wide awake, knowing he’d gone too far but with no route of return that didn’t lead through the living room where his wife steamed.

Another time he’d raised the specter of Peary’s wife Josephine and how game she always was for adventure in the dark of their bedroom, and Julia said, “For fuck’s sake, Oscar. There’s no North Pole in our lives. Stop trying to turn everyday life into big, dramatic moments and important moral dilemmas. It’s not like that. No one’s life is. That’s what we watch TV for. I’m just tired, okay? That’s all there is to it. Some days you’re just tired and it doesn’t have to mean anything. Now shut up and let me sleep.”

More often the argument ended with Julia yawning, clamping down on her anger and telling Oscar not to get so insulted, not to take it so personally, that the last thing she wanted at the end of a long day was more expectation—she came home to get away from demands for a few hours and to put her body aside.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Steve Himmer is author of the novels Fram, The Bee-Loud Glade, and Scratch(coming in 2016). He edits the webjournal Necessary Fiction and teaches at Emerson College in Boston.

Kate reviews: The Devil's Workshop

The Devil’s Workshop by Jáchym Topol (translated by Alex Zucker)

4 stars - Highly Recommended by Kate

Pages: 166

Publisher: Portobello Books

Released: 2013

Guest review by Kate Vane

This novel by Czech writer Jáchym Topol is a dark satire which asks troubling questions on what we should remember and what we should forget.

The unnamed narrator grows up in Terezín, a town which houses a Medieval fortress and a former Nazi prison. His father is a military bandsman, his mother a survivor of the prison, as are most of the people of the town. The narrator grows up, in a mockery of a pastoral idyll, herding goats on the fortifications, scrabbling in underground tunnels for Nazi memorabilia and failing to live up to his father’s ambitions before he is forced to leave.

Years later he returns to Terezín. The army has left and the authorities no longer want to maintain the town. His “uncle”, Lebo, born in the Nazi prison, is determined that nothing should be lost. They begin a protest movement which draws international attention – and lucrative opportunities as they sell souvenir T-shirts and accommodate visitors and obtain funding from philanthropists worldwide. Then political upheaval means the narrator has to leave for Belarus where the book takes a darker turn.

The narrator has a sly naivety. He recounts events as he experiences them, stripped of context. This can make it difficult at times to follow events. There is an afterword by the translator which fills in some of the gaps but I think he was right to put it at the end. It means that like the narrator, the reader experiences conflict and instability as most people do when they are at the heart of them –seeing details, specifics, without a coherent narrative, which is only imposed later, and somehow make whatever occurred seem inevitable.

The narrator has no sense of history, only of a home. He accepts the world as he finds it and makes the best of the opportunities he sees. In contrast, Terezín attracts what he calls the “bunk seekers”. They are distinct from the casual sightseers who take photos and walk the heritage trail. They are western descendants of Holocaust survivors who believe they have a personal interest in the town’s story. They look for meaning in the prison camp, something to give them an identity.

The book’s humour lies in the way it overturns assumptions. Sara, a bunk seeker from Sweden, berates the narrator. She, not he, is the one that truly suffers the legacy of Terezín. His complexes only arise because of what he’s lived through. Hers are a product of her unique personality.

The simple language of the book contrasts with the complexity of the ideas as the story turns in on itself. How is the past commodified, and for whose benefit? If you don’t know your history, does it still shape you? Does it even make sense to call it “yours”?

This book is dark, unsettling and raises lots of questions. It also resolutely refuses to provide any answers.

Kate Vane writes crime and literary fiction. Her latest novel is Not the End. She lives on the Devon coast in the UK.

Audio series: JW Bouchard

Our audio series "The Authors Read. We Listen."  was hatched in a NYC club during BEA back in 2012. It's a fun little series, where authors record themselves reading an excerpt from their own novels, in their own voices, the way their stories were meant to be heard.




Today, JW Bouchard reads from his self published novel The Z Club. Bouchard is a horror, crime, science fiction, and children’s fantasy author best known for his novels Last Summer and The Z Club.  When he isn’t writing, he enjoys surveying unexplored parts of Wind Cave in South Dakota, traveling to exotic locales, and teaching his kids bad habits.  He lives in Iowa.

Click the soundcloud link below to hear JW Bouchard read an excerpt from The Z Club:






The word on The Z Club:

RISE OF THE ZOMBIE-KILLING NERDS…

When a Chinese space shuttle carrying mysterious cargo crash lands in the small town of Trudy, Iowa, a group of nerdy horror movie buffs must band together to stop an outbreak that is bringing the dead back to life and turning the rest of the population into brain-eating zombies.

THEY’RE STILL NOT HAPPY ABOUT BEING PICKED ON IN HIGH SCHOOL…

Armed with their considerable knowledge of bad cinema and an ice cream truck full of stolen guns, they will battle the infected to save their town and to keep the outbreak from spreading to the entire world.

TO THE FAINT OF HEART…

This book is full of gore, humor, and more cheesy one-liners than you can shake a stick at. 
*lifted with love from goodreads

Book Review: The Z Club

Read 4/2/15
4 Stars - Highly Recommended to fans of zombie lit with a sense of humor
Pages: 248
Publisher: Self Pubbed
Released 2013



There is nothing better than picking up a book with the intention of reading just a few lines on that first page to test it out, when the next thing you know, it's four hours later and you've read the darn thing cover to cover.

That was me and JW Bouchard's The Z Club two weeks ago. By now I think you guys know that I'm a super-sucker for all things zombies. I've read and reviewed a bunch of zombie lit and I've watched more than my fair share of zombie flicks. Some of my absolute favorites are Warm Bodies (the book was better than the movie, ICYDK), The Autumn series, A Questionable Shape, Braineater Jones,  Shaun of the Dead, Zombieland, The Walking Dead (both the comics and the show, and helloooo, did you see? The companion series is coming out this summer!!)... smart, serious, satirical, cheesy, gory, choose your own adventure, give them to me. I love them all.

And now The Z Club sits right up there with all the rest. It's fantastically hyper-aware of itself and pokes fun at all of the very best things about the genre. Old school zombie aficionados will find a ton to love here. When you boil it down, it's basically about a group of grown up BFF guys with their girls, who have a more-than-disturbing knowledge of all things Zombie culture, suddenly find themselves in the midst of an actual zombie apocalypse. But it's so much more. It's like a kid walking into a candy store, only a billion times more deadly.

I loved how JW kicks the novel off by throwing us gut-deep into the initial zombie outbreak. Though for those first few pages, we don't know it yet. We're just as clueless as the dude who wakes up to a strange noise in the middle of the night. As he climbs out of bed to investigate and the realization that we're fucked dawns on us both, JW yanks us out of the moment and plants us firmly in the past - 48 hours earlier, in a  comic book store with Kevin and his staff of two - Derek and Rhonda - as they watch the CNN report about a missing Chinese space shuttle and its mysterious cargo. Hmmm....

Meanwhile, part of the shuttle has crash landed right in Kevin's small town, and his buddy Ryan - a local cop - is one of the first on scene when a firefighter who gets too close the wreckage suddenly takes ill and is rushed to the hospital. So we've got our Patient Zero, and all the questions like wtf was that shuttle carrying, but uh-oh, it's too late for that now, because the virus starts to spread like nobody's business. And then there's their poor ole pal Fred, a reluctant, sex starved plumber, who is completely oblivious to what's happening as he hits up his morning's first appointment. Because you always have to have that one guy who wanders straight into the lion's mouth without realizing...

As you can imagine, shit starts rolling downhill pretty quickly from here and in a very cool but very we-totally-saw-it-coming Shaun-of-the-Dead way, our previously scattered group of friends all magically find their way to one another. Once they're bunkered down, they seem to make all the wrong B movie choices and the whole time you're like "no you idiot, don't do thaaaaat" and "now's not the time for nookie" and "stay inside! why in the world would you go out there?" but lo and behold, our little group of goofballs pull themselves together long enough to put together a ridiculously insane plan that could  quite possibly save their shitty little town from getting their brains sucked out.

Complete with requisite groans of braaaaaiiiinsssss and a stupid-wicked stash of weaponry, our man JW does the zombie genre proud. We even get to watch our little band of small time heroes battle a big ass boss - as one does - because defeating swarm after swarm of brain eating, flesh slurping, rotbags isn't enough. Oh, and those deleted scenes at the end? Priceless! You can tell he had as much fun writing the novel as I had reading it.

A hugely entertaining read all zombie fans should add to their lists, and a superb example of self publishing done right.

The Page 69 Test: Bombyonder

The Page 69 Test is not mine. It has been around since 2007, asking authors to compare page 69 against the meat of the actual story it is a part of. I loved the whole idea of it and so I'm stealing it specifically to showcase small press titles - novels, novellas, short story collections, the works! So until the founder of The Page 69 Test calls a cease and desist, let's do this thing....

In this installment of Page 69, 

we put Reb Livingston's Bombyonder to the test....

OK, Reb, set up page 69 for us.

It’s the last page of a section titled “Protection” where the protagonist, in her usual helter-skelterish manner, ruminates on shields, names, historical contexts and connections. All themes that run throughout the novel. What is a true threat? What are we witness to? How does protection work and what does it accomplish? She struggles to create her own structure and views, while rejecting what currently is in place, despite being complicit in what she attempts to reject. Every time she thinks she’s made sense of something, something comes in to complicate matters further. There is no sense. There’s a boy on a donkey, he’s dead or maybe he’s alive. She has no idea who he is or what he’s about and at this point in the story, she chooses to let the matter drop and focuses her attention on a golem (“Terrifyingly Handsome”) she created from her husband’s corpse.

What is Bombyonder about?

After agreeing to her father’s request to slit his throat so his much anticipated legacy can begin, the unnamed protagonist swallows his invention, a “kind” bomb in pill form. This triggers a psychic shattering of sorts which begins with her barfing up a dead bird that she is compelled to rebirth/replace/bury (she’s not sure) by embarking on a fragmented psychic excavation where she commits an additional murder of her husband, meets a parrot-faced cat girl and a boy on a donkey and then creates a new lover by decoupaging her husband’s corpse with denim and other household craft items.

Throughout the novel the protagonist struggles to recognize both the roots of her malaise and why she repeatedly searches for solutions/escape through her bizarre partnerships with men. She muddles through with help from her friend, Lily, a straight-texter who lives in a box inside a box and by mysterious, anonymous notes written to her by the Carries, her long gone female ancestors. When the protagonist finally acknowledges that romantic partnerships are not the way to improve on her situation, she connects with her unconceived brother, Rauan, who never existed (due to a genetic condition affecting all the women on her mother’s side that doesn’t allow male zygotes to develop in their wombs). Rauan desperately wants to connected with their abusive mother, the Worm Queen, while the protagonist makes plans to smother her to death with a pillow. Friction develops between the siblings who clearly desire different outcomes and as Rauan tries to overcome his non-conception to become a tangible, corporeal being.

Eventually the protagonist alone must face her worm-filled mother, avenge Rauan’s non-conception, figure out how to birth her vomit bird and through personal historical revisionism create a new life for herself and those she brings with her.

Do you think this page gives our readers an accurate sense of what the book is about?

Somewhat. The book is, well, strange. It’s told from the protagonist’s fractured psyche, which goes all over all the place so I’m not so sure one single page could give anything close to an accurate sense of what the book is about. It’s a bunch of shards that when pieced together tell the story.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Page 69 

BOMBYONDER

Please provide a viable DNA sample for the footnotes else this entry will be marked for deletion.

The family agreed to help the boy’s mother grieve. Or at least see what they could do. The unwanted shield left on the door waited for something to be done. Waiting for something to happen is like slitting your own throat. It’s better to have the ability to swallow, even if it hurts. You don’t want that foulness dribbling down your fresh shirt. It makes a terrible impression.

The boy on the donkey rides again. Free donkey rides. The confluence of a donkey and a horse is a mule or hinny.

A one-dream donkey. Started with the name, diverged with the boy, and then something well-meaning died. Then came another boy on a donkey. Reborn donkey boy has risen? Younger, more handsome donkey boy brother? Donkey boy 2.0?

He has risen?

Risen from what?

I didn’t inquire. He was much too young for me. My attention fixed on Terrifyingly Handsome, my bounded mate.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Reb Livingston (http://reblivingston.net/) is the author of Bombyonder (Bitter Cherry Books 2014), God Damsel (No Tell Books 2010) and Your Ten Favorite Words (Coconut Books 2007). She curates the Bibliomancy Oracle (http://bibliomancyoracle.tumblr.com/askoracle) and lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and son.

Book Review: All This Life

Read 3/30/15 - 4/2/15
4 Stars - Highly Recommended, I mean, c'mon, it's a Mohr!
Pages: 304
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
Releasing: July 2015




If you're reading this review, you are most likely either hanging out on my blog right now or viewing it on Goodreads. And you probably discovered that I had written the review because you saw it in your feed burner, followed the link from our Facebook post, clicked on the link when I tweeted about it, or saw it in your Goodreads updates.

God bless social media, huh? It's insanely immediate, connecting complete strangers at the click of the mouse to news, videos, rants, raves, and yeah, even book reviews like this one. It helps us feel like we are a part of something bigger. We can sample and download the latest music. We can stream the biggest blockbusters. We can post videos of cute cuddly kittens and people falling flat on their faces. We can tag friends in our photos. We can contact authors and publishers and request review copies. We can comment on everything, everywhere, at any time. We can cyber bully. We can subtweet. We can stalk. We can lurk. We can embarrass and astonish. With social media, we can be whoever we want to be. We can become an overnight success or the brunt of one of the biggest online bash sessions.

And in Joshua Mohr's All The Life, we experience just how quickly social media can connect us while it simultaneously tears us apart.

It starts out with a morning like any other for Paul and his son Jake, crawling through the morning commute traffic on the San Francisco Bridge - Paul lost in his own thoughts and Jake randomly recording strangers outside his car window. Until he spots the marching band, catching their tragic statement on tape and uploading it to YouTube -an experience that creates a nasty chain of events that will change his life, and the lives of so many others, forever.

Jake sits back and let's the video do its thing, reaching tens of thousands and ultimately millions, as the social media and news outlets latch on to it, sky rocketing him into near celebrity status. Paul grows concerned and then desperate as Jake withdraws further from him, while Jake struggles with his new found fame, still trying to digest what he witnessed that day on the bridge, and misjudges the lengths his followers will go for him.

In Arizona, Sara's watching Jake's video of the marching band when she discovers through a series of texts that her (ex)boyfriend has just posted one of their sex tapes online. Within days, the tape goes viral. Distraught at how her small town will react, Sara confides in her neighbor, and long ago crush, Rodney, who suffers from a debilitating speech impediment caused by a freak accident back when they were just kids. Born partly from her desperation to escape the wrath of her over protective brother, Sara and Rodney make plans to head to California to find Rodney's mother, who abandoned him when the stress of his accident became too much for her to bear.

As all of this is happening, Noah, brother of the one of marching band members, attempts to come to terms with what his sister has done and views Jake's video. Stuck in a cycle of self blame and near denial, Noah embarks on a mission to say goodbye to Tracey in the very place the video was recorded.

In his most character-heavy novel to date, Mohr masterfully moves this group of lonely, lost souls together, as they each struggle to come to terms with the things they've lost. Sara, who grieves the loss of her privacy; Rodney, the loss of his former self; Jake, the loss of his innocence; Paul, the lack of a relationship with his son; Noah, blaming himself for the loss of his sister; and Kathleen, her choice to abandon Rodney when he needed her most.

All This Life shines a spotlight on social media's ugly side. It's a stark reminder of how quickly we can lose control of the things that define us, the things we hold most private, and warns us to be wary of what we share.  How the smallest ripple can cause the greatest waves. And how life can quickly spiral out of our grasp and become larger than we ever imagined. In a way, I feel Mohr's novel challenges us to appreciate the life we have, to live it for what's it worth, aware of the scrapes and scars we might endure but not to become crippled by them, not allowing ourselves to get bogged down with the things we can't control.

Worth a read if you're a social media addict like me!

The Audio Series: Jamie Grefe

Our audio series "The Authors Read. We Listen."  was hatched in a NYC club during BEA back in 2012. It's a fun little series, where authors record themselves reading an excerpt from their own novels, in their own voices, the way their stories were meant to be heard.




Today, Jamie Grefe adds his voice to the series by reading an excerpt from "Domo ArigaDIE!!!"
 Jamie is an author writing within the realms of the bizarre, the darkly comedic, the surrealistic, the horrifying and the cinematic. His first book, The Mondo Vixen Massacre, was published in 2013 by Eraserhead Press. Grefe is also the author of two limited-edition Dynatox Ministries  novellas, Cannibal Fatales and Mutagon II. In 2015 his novelization of Tim Heidecker’s Adult Swim web series, DECKER, was published to great acclaim as DECKER: CLASSIFIED. Most recently, Grefe’s Domo ArigaDIE!!! was published by Rooster Republic Press. His short fiction and poetry appears in such venues as Birkensnake, The Bacon Review, New Dead Families, elimae, Prick of the Spindle, Sein und Werden and Bizarro Central among other places. In 2014, Grefe began writing for the screen. Believe it or not, he quickly sold FOUR scripts to one his low-budget directorial idols who shall (for the time being) remain unnamed. Currently, Grefe is amassing a library of spec scripts that he hopes to sell and/or attract the attention of a talent agency and/or manager. For more on Grefe’s specs, go HERE.

Listen to Jamie read an excerpt from Domo ArigaDIE!!! by clicking on the soundcloud link below:







The word on Domo ArigaDIE!!!

From Jamie Grefe, the author of DECKER: CLASSIFIED (with Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington), The Mondo Vixen Massacre, Cannibal Fatales, and Mutagon II, this bizarro blade of a book boils with a fevered cinematic intensity, sure to satisfy and heal your inner beast.

Alodia Obelisk is a ninja assassin whose life is about to take a stab for the worst—for the ultra-violent worst. When her elderly ninja master is slaughtered for the ninja secrets he possesses by the sadistic boss of The Order of Azaded, a perverse death-cult, Alodia and her sister, Erika, become next on the cult's kill list. The cult's plan for the sisters: to crack open their skulls, extract their brains and blend those magic-infused-brains with a brute soldier clone—for the purpose of world domination. But when the cult seizes Erika during a crazy New Tokyo bathhouse battle, Alodia has no choice but to strike back and annihilate the opposition before her sister's brains are scooped from her cranium. With vivid bursts of suspense, surrealism, science-fiction, saucy humor, and neo-pulp ferocity, comes a story of the psychophysical power hidden inside of a true warrior, a story that doesn't shy away from the blood, the grime, and the glory of love, and a story of one ninja's powerful transformation in the face of utter evil. 
*lifted with love from goodreads

Indie Book Buzz: Fig Tree Books

We're trying to bring back the Indie Book Buzz here at TNBBC. If you are a small press publishing house and want to spread the word about some upcoming titles you are most excited about releasing, you know what to do!

This week's pick is brought you by Erika Dreifus, 

Media Editor at Fig Tree Books

COMPULSION: A NOVEL, Meyer Levin (with a foreword by Marcia Clark and an introduction by Gabriel Levin)

(To be released: April 14, 2015)

WHAT IT’S ABOUT: This reissued classic is a riveting and literary thriller about the basic drives that compel us to act in the name of good or evil. Based on the Leopold and Loeb case of 1924 – once considered the crime of the 20th century – Meyer Levin’s Compulsion presents both an incisive and nuanced psychological portrait of two young murderers. Part of Chicago’s elite Jewish society, Judd Steiner and Artie Straus have it all: money, smarts and the world at their feet. Obsessed with Nietzsche’s idea of the superhuman, they decide to prove that they are above the laws of man by arbitrarily murdering a boy in their neighborhood — for the sheer sake of getting away with the crime.

Compulsion is narrated by Sid Silver, a budding journalist at the University of Chicago and a fictional surrogate for Meyer Levin, who was a classmate of Leopold and Loeb and reported on their trial himself; like Sid, Levin became enmeshed in the case while covering it. Early on, a pair of Judd’s horn-rimmed eyeglasses is found at the scene of the crime. Authorities slowly begin to unveil other pieces of evidence that suggest the young men’s guilt. When their respective alibis collapse, Artie and Judd each confess. Fearing an anti-Semitic backlash and anxious to be viewed first and foremost as Americans, the Jewish community in Chicago demands steadfastly that justice be served.

WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT: This book sold over one million copies back in the 1950s when it was first published, but I hadn’t read it until I joined Fig Tree last summer; reading it turned out to be much more of a pleasure than responsibility. I’m a history buff, but I didn’t know more than the bare outline of the Leopold and Loeb case before I read this novel. And if, like me, you’re a fan of courtroom dramas, you’ll be fascinated by the legal strategies and courtroom scenes: The chief defense attorney, based on his real-life counterpart Clarence Darrow, hires a slew of psychoanalysts and begins to construct a first-of-its-kind defense—that Artie and Judd are not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. Whole segments of the courtroom sections are taken directly from the trial transcripts (and Darrow was quite the lawyer). Plus, our edition features a simply gorgeous introduction by one of Meyer Levin’s sons, poet and translator Gabriel Levin, in addition to an insightful forward by attorney-writer Marcia Clark.

THE BOOK OF STONE: A NOVEL, Jonathan Papernick

(To be released: May 12, 2015)

WHAT IT’S ABOUT: A searing psychological thriller set in pre-9/11 Brooklyn in which a family’s dark history and an estranged son’s attempt to find meaning and purpose converge. Matthew Stone has inherited a troubling legacy: a gangster grandfather and a distant father—who is also a disgraced judge. After his father’s death, Matthew is a young man alone. He turns to his father’s beloved books for comfort, perceiving within them guidance that leads him to connect with a group of religious extremists. As Matthew immerses himself in this unfamiliar world, the FBI seeks his assistance to foil the group’s violent plot. Caught between these powerful forces, haunted by losses past and present, and desperate for redemption, Matthew charts a course of increasing peril—for himself and for everyone around him. From the author of The Ascent of Eli Israel and There is No Other, The Book of Stone examines the evolution of the terrorist mentality and the complexities of religious extremism, as well as how easily a vulnerable mind can be exploited for dark purposes. Lyrical and incendiary, The Book of Stone is a masterfully crafted novel that reveals the ambiguities of “good” and “evil”.

WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT: It’s difficult to think of a novel that’s as timely as this one. Yes, the book’s action is set before 9/11, but much of what animates the plot—how a young man can be won over to extremism—exudes an utterly contemporary resonance. I read this book with ever-increasing dread and unease, and I agree with the advance readers who have pegged it as likely to ignite some very lively debates and discussions.

SAFEKEEPING: A NOVEL, Jessamyn Hope

(To be released: June 9, 2015)

WHAT IT’S ABOUT: A profound and moving novel about love, the inevitability of loss, and the courage it takes to keep starting over. It’s 1994 and Adam, a drug addict from New York City, arrives at a kibbutz in Israel with a medieval sapphire brooch. To make up for a past crime, he needs to get the priceless heirloom to a woman his grandfather loved when he was a Holocaust refugee on the kibbutz fifty years earlier. There Adam joins other troubled people trying to turn their lives around: Ulya, the ambitious and beautiful Soviet émigré; Farid, the lovelorn Palestinian farmhand; Claudette, the French Canadian Catholic with OCD; Ofir, the Israeli teenager wounded in a bus bombing; and Ziva, the old Zionist Socialist firebrand who founded the kibbutz. By the end of that summer, through their charged relationships with one another, they each get their last chance at redemption. In the middle of this web glows the magnificent sapphire brooch with its perilous history spanning three continents and seven centuries. With insight and beauty, Safekeeping tackles that most human of questions: how can we expect to find meaning and happiness when we know that nothing lasts?

WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT: Simply put, this book is gorgeously written, populated by distinct and memorable characters and absolutely marvelous dialogue. As I read it, I couldn’t help thinking of Amos Oz’s kibbutz stories and the ways in which Safekeeping, too, so magnificently creates a world that may be foreign to so many of us—I’ve never lived on a kibbutz, myself—and yet so richly vivid and palpable. (In my fantasies, I get to put a copy of this book in Oz’s hands myself.)

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Erika Dreifus is Media Editor at Fig Tree Books, a new publishing company specializing in the best fiction on American Jewish Experience (AJE). She is the author of Quiet Americans: Stories (Last Light Studio), which was named an American Library Association Sophie Brody Medal Honor Title (for outstanding achievement in Jewish literature), a Jewish Journal “Notable Book,” and a Shelf Unbound “Top Small-Press Book.” Erika is also an essayist, poet, and book reviewer, as well as the editor/publisher of The Practicing Writer, a free monthly e-newsletter on the craft and business of writing.